The Media Innovation Circle#4 took place on July 23 with a talk by Diego Zavala Scherer, Professor at the Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico),  followed by a participated discussion on the topic “Ways of Seeing and Hearing: Representational Limits in Two Docweb Case Studies”, moderated by Pedro Cardoso, a DigiMedia Researcher.

The video is already available on DigiMedia YouTube channel. Watch HERE. We invite you to subscribe the channel.

Diego Zavala Scherer, Mexico City (1978) holds a PhD in Social Communication at Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). Research professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. His research interests are interactive documentary, documentary theory and Mexican film. Member of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT, Mexico). Coordinator of the Research Group in Media, Arts and Digital Culture at Tecnologico de Monterrey. Director of Virtualis, Digital Communication Journal.

Abstract

As part of the contemporary discussion between the representational (Nichols) and operational modes (Farocki, Mittell) of understanding images (and sound) in documentary and interactive documentary theory, this talk questions the limits of the indexical link with reality through two doc web examples. The interest of this presentation is to explore some of the paradoxes that interactive nonfiction production creates by following the canonic perspective of a verisimilar bond with the world and how, in the times of media hyperproduction, this relation between reality and image fells short to explain our ways of engaging as individuals, public, and consumers with some dimensions of our life such as history and politics.